Down Garment Industry Standard Needs To Be Issued As Soon As Possible

Ms. Wang of Guangyuan City, Sichuan Province, recently bought a down jacket for 599 yuan through e-commerce platform. The online store claims that the down jacket is white duck down with 90% down and 190g down filling. However, after receiving the goods, only the fabric and lining ingredients are marked on the washing label, and there is no information about down. After negotiation, the store was willing to refund, but insisted that the label was missing.

"China is a big down producing country." Zhu Wei, director of the Information Department of the China Down Industry Association, said that Chinese down enterprises have accumulated rich experience in a large number of production practices, and their production capacity and technology are in a leading position in the world.

However, the down jacket market is mixed. In January 2024, the General Administration of Market Supervision and Administration of the People's Republic of China reported the state supervision and spot check on the quality of down clothing products. The results showed that 26 batches of 185 batches of products were unqualified, including 18 batches of cashmere content, 11 batches of down content and 11 batches of fiber content.

"If it is marked with down velvet, down cotton and other descriptions, it is not down jacket." Zhu Wei said that the current down jacket production implementation is the national standard GB/T 14272-2021 (hereinafter referred to as the "new national standard") officially implemented in April 2022. "If the executive standard marked on the tag is GB/T 14272-2011, or the lint content instead of the lint content, it may be the inventory product produced previously." Compared with the previous national standard, the most significant change of the "new national standard" is to change the "lint content" to "lint content". "According to the new national standard, the down jacket's down content should not be less than 50%, otherwise it cannot be called down jacket," Zhu Wei said.

As far as down itself is concerned, the two most important factors that determine the thermal insulation performance of down jacket are the amount of down filling and fluffy degree. Generally speaking, the more filling and puffiness, the better warmth retention. When purchasing online, you must check whether the product label information is complete, whether the logo is correct, and whether the hanging tag and washing label information are consistent.

Cao Zonghua, secretary-general of the Down Garment Sub Technical Committee of the National Garment Standardization Technical Committee, introduced that the certificate of conformity on the down jacket, namely, the main tag and the washing label, all belong to the product instructions, and must include the manufacturer's name and address, down type, down content, down filling amount, executive standards and other information. When the market supervision department supervises the spot check, it will entrust a third-party testing agency to test or check the contents marked on the certificate of conformity and the washing label. If any content does not meet the above standards, or the tag of the same down jacket is inconsistent with the washing label, it will be judged as unqualified products.

In view of the problems such as incomplete or even wrong identification information of down jackets sold on the market at present, Cao Zonghua suggested that the market supervision department should carry out special supervision and spot check on down jacket identification of down jacket manufacturers and circulation channels, especially in areas where production is concentrated and down jacket identification is not standardized, such as online broadcast, wholesale markets, street stores, etc, Focus on the investigation and treatment of sales channels with unqualified identifications, and promote the comprehensive rectification of production plants and sales channels from point to area. At the same time, market supervision departments, consumer protection associations, industry associations and other organizations can popularize the relevant knowledge of down jacket tags and washing labels to consumers, and work in many ways to make down jacket labels more standardized and the market more orderly. (Sun Liji, Xu Leijie)

(Source: People's Daily)